Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Teacher Experience Exchange is a social network designed by HP for educators. This is a nice site for finding educational resources such as web 2.0 tools and lesson plans, and of course collaborating w/ others. Also, this is a good site for professional development and articles are rated on a 5 star scale which helps for deciding on what is relevant material.

I recommend checking out The Teacher Experience Exchange by clicking here!!

Google has revamped their Education site and I feel that it is worth mention. Not only is this a great site for the awesome Google Apps suite but for many other resources as well. Teachers can find resources, lesson plans, videos etc. Information on Google Chromebooks can be found and how they are being used in the classroom. Students can find out about the latest contest and events and much much more.

I highly recommend checking out Google in Education by clicking here!!!

Charts and Graphs are an effective tool when trying to convey information in a simple and visual way. Also, it is a great way to track trends and help explain complex datasets. This is something that has been used in the business world and education on a everyday basis. With that, I decided to list my top favorite sites for creating a chart or graph.

Top 10 Sites for Creating a Chart or Graph

Rich Chart Live - An excellent site for created animated flash based charts that can be embedded into a site. Also, a user has the ability to add links to a chart.

iCharts - Is a wonderful site/network for creating charts that you can embed into a site. Also, a user can share charts on social networking sites and browse/save other iCharts from the web.

Chartle - A great site for creating online interactive charts. What makes Chartle so unique and impressive is the ability to create more then your standard graphs such as: venn diagrams, maps, gauges, etc.

Hohli - A very user friendly site to use that is similar to Chartle. A user can create a variety of different types of charts such as: pie, scatter plots, and radar, then embed them into a site.

Lucid Chart - A nice site for creating a variety of different charts and diagrams. Also, it is a very easy site to use w/ a drag-n-drop interface. Best of all, Lucid Chart has an educational portal which allows chart creation free for education.

ChartGo - ChartGo is a neat site for creating charts that's very easy to use. All a user has to do is fill out the pre-determined sets of data and select the type of chart they want to create.

Pretty Graph - A simple site to use to make a wide variety of graphs, such as: line charts, histograms , and more. Also, a user can embed into a site, share w/ others users via email, or save as template.

Diagramly - A cool site for creating diagrams, flow charts, and more that is similar to Lucid Chart. Users of Inspiration should feel right at home w/ this online tool as there are plenty of shapes and clip art to choose from.

Cacoo - A great site for creating online charts and diagrams. A great feature is the ability to collaborate w/ others in real-time while creating a chart via a chat.

Lovely Charts - A easy site to use to make very nice looking/polished charts. While not free, there are three paid versions to choose from, such as: iPad, online, or desktop.

Bonus - Useful Charts - While not a chart creation tool, this site has some of the best looking charts for every subject. Also, laminated charts can be ordered for the classroom.

ThinkBinder is a great site for creating study groups that I just found out about from David Andrade's wonderful blog. Not only can a user create a study group but they can create a live video/text chat to share and collaborate.

Monday, January 30, 2012

QuizMEOnline is a great new social network for students. This site is ideal for creating quizzes, flashcards, and study guides and then sharing them w/ others. Another nice feature is the ability to create a study group or class and then share things w/ them. Also, a user has a number of privacy controls on who can/can't see their quizzes.

i Tell a Story is an excellent free app for digital storytelling. To me this closely resembles how Garageband is used to create a podcast. A user can upload a photo and then record their voice narrating a story. Best of all a person can add sound effects from a built in sound library or any audio from their iTunes library. A finished story is save as a mp4 filed and can be shared w/ others via email.

VoiceThread is a nifty free iPad/iPhone app for users of VoiceThread. A user can pretty much do the same thing they can do on the site such as uploading photos, adding comments, adding audio, and then drawing over a picture. When the digital story is done it can then be shared via an email. Also, this is a great way to manage and view VoiceThreads on a mobile device.

I highly recommend checking out the VoiceThread app by clicking here!!

PDF Converter Elite 3 is a new Windows software application that I found out about through a promotional email. This is a great solution for converting, editing, securing, and creating PDF's.

Here are some more details (straight from their email)...

Create PDF files from 300+ different MS Windows applications. The resulting PDFs are 100% compatible and can easily be opened and viewed with popular PDF readers such as Adobe Reader, Sumatra or Slim PDF Reader.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Android Market is a great place to find educational apps for Android devices. While I don't have any experience w/ them myself I do know that there is a place for them in the educational institution. This site has lots of screen shots and reviews of educational apps and can be browsed by most popular and free.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Spelling City is a site I've blogged about quite a bit lately and am sending out my monthly reminder on just how good of site this really is. For anyone looking for vocabulary or spelling help this is definitely way to go. Educators, really need to check this out due to the educational portal and the ability to upload word lists and have them implemented into their educational games.

Alien Buddies is a nice inexpensive app ($1.99) for the iPad/iPhone. I decided to check it out since it is available for free today at the app store 1-27-12 (click here) and would be great for my youngsters. This app has lots to like for PreK-1 aged students. It helps teach numbers, letters, and shapes through a variety of games. The games include: matching, puzzles, connecting dot to dot, and stickers.

AnMish is new (beta) site that I found out about from Cliotech and is great for digital storytelling. Not only is this site super fun and easy to use but it allows users to select characters and then record their own voice to add to them. A person can then embed videos to share w/ others. This site does have cartoon celebrities, puppets, and more to choose from, while not ideal for education it can be used by a teacher or w/ proper supervision.

AmyLovesYA is a new blog dedicated to young adult literature. This is a great place to find reviews, collaborate on books, and so on. It's written by an English teacher who is going for her MLIS (Master of Library and Information Speciliast).

Quixey is a great search engine for finding apps. A user just types in what they want the app to do and search through the results. The results show the price and rating of an app on a 5 star scale. Keep in mind not all search results are for mobile app devices but computer applications as well.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Tutorspree is an excellent new site for finding private tutors. This is a very easy site to use and people can search for tutors by subject or by area. All tutors list how much they charge per hr and have a bio that shows their educational background. Also, educators can sign up if they would like to become a tutor and earn some extra income.

Check This is a site that I just found out about from Free Technology 4 Teachers, for creating simple web pages. This is a very simple site to use that reminds me a bit of Loose Leaves or Scriffon. A user can add: text, videos, photos, or backgrounds. Once a page is done, all a user has to do is share the unique URL that is generated.

HipChat is a site I've known about for quite sometime but decided to give it a look. This is a great site for creating a chat room. These rooms can be set to public or private, are very user friendly, and has a nice polished look to it. As w/ most chat rooms, people can send private messages to an individual user, attachments, and even do video and voice chatting.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

ScootPad is an excellent site for free online math and reading practice, grades 1-3. This is done in an easy and intuitive way through the use of unique reward system. A great feature is the ability for a parent to register and then create a kids account w/ username and password. Plus, there is a very nice analytics feature which shows progress through real-time charts. Best of all, there is an educational portal in the works which is ideal for the reading and math curriculum.

Lingibli appears to be a great free app for learning a new language. This is done in a 100 words or less and lets users download/buy what language they want to translate to. Once a language is selected a person can select through common languages or even practice through the use of word games.

Math Game Time is a great site for educational math games, videos, and worksheets. These games are arranged for grades PreK - 7th grade and by category. Also, there is a nice mobile app ($2.99) available as well.

Tumble Cloud is an excellent new site for collaborative digital storytelling. This site allows users to upload digital content such as photos, video, notes, etc to create a stunning story. These stories can be shared and collaborated on w/ others and users have lots of options to choose from such as effects, transitions, etc.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Microsoft in Education is an excellent resource for educators as it helps teachers implement Microsoft tools into their curriculum. This includes links for all subjects and other nice items such as: Kodu Game Lab, calculators, worksheet generators etc.

I highly recommend checking out Microsoft in Education by clicking here!!

Musicshake is an excellent new site for creating music that I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo's blog. This is a site that allows users to create copyright free music straight from a browser. Best of all, there is an educational portal which allows students to create all the music they want to share/download for one low price. Everything is done from the browser and is very easy to use. A user selects a theme, and then clicks on blocks next to the instrument they want to hear.

I highly recommend checking out Musicshake for education by clicking here!!!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Studyers is a excellent site for note taking that I found out about from equally excellent blog, Educational Technology Guy. This site is still in private alpha, but is very nice for taking class notes w/ the ability to upload photos and then share w/ others.

It has just come to my attention thx to Free Technology 4 Teachers, that Live Binders has released a free iPad app. This is nifty little app that lets users browse their collections and then rate and share them w/ others.

I recommend all Live Binder users to check out this app by clicking here!!

Open Class is a new Learning Management System which has potential to revolutionize cloud based learning. This is a totally free and easy to use online solution for educational/course management. The best way to describe it is something very similar to Moodle that fully integrates w/ Google Apps educational suite.

Taweet is a nice twitter app/site that I found out about from a friend on Twitter (weird huh?) This is a great site for professional development as it can help presenters spread the word of their upcoming workshop on twitter. Taweet is a super easy to use social calendar and helps promotes events.

Hopper is a new web tool designed to let users save anything fast and easily. This is done by installing a bookymarklet (similar to Diigo) and then clicking on Save to Hopper on any website that you want to bookmark. Also, a user can just copy and paste a URL, text, or image right into Hopper from their webpage. Another nice feature is the ability to make a URL private or shorten when managing information from your Hopper account.

Friday, January 20, 2012

gText is a new site that I just found out about from Free Technology 4 Teachers. This is a great free service for group text messaging. A user can use a cell phone to send group text messages that other people can receive. Not only can a person send text messages but they can share files, photos, and calendars as well.

Story Patch is a wonderful app ($2.99) for the iPad for digital storytelling. This app allows users to create a story from scratch or build one using their money templates. A user can add text to each page, objects, characters, backgrounds, etc. Once a story is finished it can then be shared w/ others via email as a PDF.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

iBooks Author is a new free app for the Mac that is ideal for digital storytelling and publishing any kind of book online (or in the iBooks 2 mobile app). First off, a Mac must be running at 10.7.2 in order to install this app, once that is done a person can select through multiple layouts and by drag and dropping create any type of publication they want. These digital books can include images, keynote presentations, etc etc. It is then all synced through iTunes into the iBooks 2 library catalog.

Well, there has been a lot of hype leading up to today on what Apple was going to unveil for their big educational keynote. They have just released two new impressive apps, iBooks 2 and iBooks Author. iBooks 2 is the new free update for iBooks that allows users to download and interact w/ textbooks. These textbooks include moving images, 3D graphics, and more. As of right now there are only 8 categories to choose from such as: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc.

This morning I received an email from Online Degrees regarding a top 20 list on hashtags for Twitter. After looking at this list I must say I'm pretty impressed and guessed top 2 right off the bat. #edchat and #edtech are two of the most popular hashtags I see on Twitter through the use of my PLN.

I highly recommend checking out the rest of this list by clicking here!!!

Wolfram Education Portal is a new (beta) spinoff site of their success Wolfram Alpha computation engine. This portal allows educators and students to use their learning and teaching tools. In this portal users will have access to digital textbooks, lesson plans, interactive demonstrations, and more.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Squidoo is a nice free site for users to create a page filled w/ content on any topic they choose. These pages can be viewed by others and then commented on in this community styled site. People can browse by subjects and there is a nice education section.

Brainchild is a company that I just became aware of. They are responsible for some great mobile learning devices for children and have been in the business for over 16 years. They have a catalog of innovative products and apps for mobile learning and online assessments.

Lesson Planet is an excellent search engine for teachers. Educators can find and share lesson plans, worksheets, integration tips, etc. This is an excellent site to find over 400,000 teacher reviewed lesson plans and worksheets and can even correlate them to state standards. While not a free service there is a free trial and school edition for users to try.

Orange Book looks to a fantastic site for teachers to create digital portfolios of students work. Right now this site is private beta, so sign up to give it a try. It appears to be a very simple free app to use by taking a snapshot of a student's work and then allowing the app to tag, sort, and upload the portfolio to an online interface/site.

Kinect EDucation is a wonderful educational community designed for teachers, parents, students, and developers who want to incorporate 21st century technology into their lives. This is a great place for people to collaborate and share resources such as: lesson plans, news, and more. Also, this is a nice place to find educational apps developed for Kinect EDucation users.

Open2Go is a wonderful web application for storing and sharing notes/links on your phone. Android and iPhone users don't need to install anything and just type in the code that is given to them after creating a note or finding a URL. Other users can install a free web application or bookmarklet for easy access.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything is a wonderful guide to, errrrr, ummmmm, everything!! This site really has it all for educational resources. A teacher can find stuff on 21st Century learning, developing a PLN, QR Codes, iPad's in the classroom, etc etc.

Friday, January 13, 2012

ComicStrip is a nice app (.99) for the iPad/iPhone. This allows students to create a digital story as they would w/ any online comic strip creator. A user can upload or take a photo, edit their layout, and then add speech bubbles and stickers. While it is not the most robust product around it does offer a nice and inexpensive way to explore this 21st century skill.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Edheads is a wonderful site that I just found out about from the ever popular, Educational Technology Guy. This is a great site to find activities for students to do as well as a nice place to find teacher resources.

Free stands for Federal Resources for Education Excellence. This is a great site for free teaching resources and lesson plans from the federal government. A person can search through a variety of resources in any number of subjects. These resources include images and links and are very easy to navigate through.

This post is going to be a first for me. I collaborated w/ a good friend of mine who is an IT specialist who has worked in school districts as a Apple/Network guru for over 10 years. I decided to pick his brain and compile some of the most useful terminal commands for an Apple user. These tips are nice to have for the novice user just get their feet wet in using the terminal. While I've done some of this in the past I've always had help w/ an experienced user and would never mess around in the terminal unassisted. The terminal allows users to modify and preform tasks to their system that they can not normally do.

Disclaimer - It is never wise to use the terminal w/out knowing what you are doing first. Be sure to have assistance or a reliable backup before preforming such tasks. We are only trying to inform people of some of the things that can be done and help users understand what is going on "under the hood".

man - Man is how you get help on using any . Not sure what command you need? You can try man -k and hope that you picked an appropriate keyword, if not, try another keyword until you find what you're looking for. Or give up and ask somebody smarter.

sudo - Allows your account to run commands as superuser (root), assuming you have admin privileges or have been added to the sudoers file by an account that does have admin privileges.

du -cks /* | sort -nr - Show how the files in utilize your disk. du -cks totals the sizes of all files and subdirectories inside the directory (e.g., /Applications, or ~/Desktop) in kilobytes, then sorts them from largest to smallest. Useful for finding what is filling up your disk. Use sudo if some of the files don't belong to you.

ls -al - Lists all files in the current directory assuming you have adequate permissions. Shows if each item listed is a directory, with permission, owner and group info for each file as well as info on the size, age and of course the file's name.

pwd - Will print on the screen what directory the OS has you currently in, no matter how you got there.

cd - Change directory. Useful tricks to know with cd - cd .. will move you to the parent directory, assuming there is one. cd ~ will take you to your home directory. cd / will take you to the root of the drive, everything on the drive is contained within /.

su - Allows you to switch to another account, assuming you know that account's password. This includes the superuser (root) account. Unlike sudo, which only runs the a command as root, su will switch you into root or some other account until you exit, giving you all the powers and restrictions of that account. Useful if you aren't in an admin account but know the name and password of an admin account, you can su to the admin account and then do admin stuff, including using sudo to do superuser stuff.

whoami - So you're a whiz with su, you've been changing into other accounts all day, and suddenly you realize that you're not sure how many times you've exited, or to put it more succinctly, you're not sure what account you're in. whoami will list the current account, useful when things that you think should work aren't working because you're not who you thought you were!

ping - This how you check that your computer can connect to another computer over the network. ping www.google.com should let you know if you can connect to google, or if you know another computer's IP address, you can do something like ping 192.168.1.1 (this is a common home router address, but may not be yours so that one may not work for you.)

less - Less breaks up the results of some other command into screen size pages. This is done by piping the output of the other command to less (e.g.. ls -R | less) by placing the vertical bar or pipe character between the commands. Assuming that there is more than a single screen of output from the other command, less will show a : on the last line of the screen and pressing the space bar will advance to the next page. Some other useful keys at the : are return to advance a single line and q to exit less immediately. If less isn't available on your system, try more. As the old saying goes, less is more, more or less.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Pastevid is a great site for taking a screencast (recording) and then sharing it w/ others via a unique URL. This is free and offers a lot of features such as YouTube integration, etc. However, there is a paid version which offers even more.

Slidestory is a nice site for creating simple slideshows w/ photos and audio narration. Once a user register they can download a free publishing application (only works w/ Windows). This application allows users to upload photos and add their narration. They can then be viewed by sharing a unique URL. There are a bunch of nice educational slideshows to view on here as well.

I recommend for Windows users to check out Slidestory by clicking here.

SmartTots is an excellent new (beta) site that I just found out about from Free Technology 4 Teachers. This site is dedicated to finding educational apps for kids. Apps are arranged by different categories such as age level and subject, and are reviewed by parents and teachers.

PDFescape is a great site for allowing users to edit, create, or fill out a PDF. This is ideal for those that don't have access to a PDF editor or need to get something done in a hurry w/out the hassle of an application.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Duolingo is a wonderful new (private beta) for learning a foreign language. This is done by having users translate the web/text at their learning place. Sentences are given to users at their own learning pace and if they don't know a word DL helps by supplying correct words w/ images.

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David Kapuler

I have been working w/ technology and education for over 14 years in a school setting. I'm looking for work in a K-12 environment as a Technology Integration/Support Specialist in WI/IL. Contact email - dkapuler@gmail.com
I'm currently looking to get my Mac OS/Repair Certification, as well as a Masters in Technology Integration.
Also, I have a solid background in web design, w/ network/server support.
On a personal note, I';m a proud father of 3 boys and 1 girl, and have been married for 10 years.